Historical-Los Angeles: Molokane versus City's Health Officials (1907)
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Historical-Los Angeles: Molokane versus City's Health Officials (1907)
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Posted: 16 Jun 2008 3:38PM GMT |
Classification: Query
Los Angeles Times May 19, 1907, pg. V14
Clever Fist Beats Chair
Doctor Treating Molokane Has to Fight
City’s Health Officials Have Their Troubles
Strange Things Occur in Local Russia
Down by the river bed, bordering it on both sides from First Street to Aliso Street, and from Alameda Street to the bluff at the western edge of Boyle Heights, is one of America’s strangest foreign colonies-a colony where disciples of Tolstoi ignore American laws save when they need the law’s help. The Molokane-2000 of them-live here and multiply, mostly to wonderful contrariety to health regulations.
Here Health Department officials and American physicians find themselves harassed by fearful ignorance of sanitary customs and by an ignorance of medical requirements which is well nigh uncanny. Here doctors have fled hypodermic syringes in hand, from fathers, chair brandishing; or, standing their ground, have fought grim battles in behalf of the health of the community. Children have died in this district because parents spread insect powders on their bread and butter, or fond relatives dissolved antiseptic tablets in water to make the fluid more refreshing. Men and women have wed, calmly ignoring the marriage licenses, and children have been born without the scratch of a pen being laid to report blanks. This colony is, indeed, the thorn in the sides of those who get their salaries from the city treasury for caring for the city’s people.
PEOPLE ONLY PICTURESQUE
It is a picturesque place-a place which, is not of America. But it is picturesque only so far as people go. In itself it is a squalid region, a huddle of flat houses and tenements, of squat cottages and dilapidated huts. Its streets are dusty and the afternoon sun blazes unkindly into front windows, warming rooms already too warm from many babies, and fetid from drying clothing.
The picturesqueness comes to you when you happen on a group of huge, hairy men, booted in cowhide, wearing leather-visored caps and shirts which flap apron like in the wind. These are tall, broad-shouldered sons of the soil, with long, full beards and heavy, ox-eyed faces. Everything in their figures suggests massive physical strength. And in their features many line speaks of calmness almost amounting to bovine indifference. Their women pass by them or work on porches and inside doorways-women on whose heads are white or tinted kirtles. Their dresses are of yellow and red and green. Their feet are large. They are heavy-breasted, broad hipped and wide-shouldered. From generations back they and their others toiled in the fields, stopping their work only as they bore children. Such are the Molokane.
They come from that part of Russia near Poland. They were always peasants. They came to belong to one of the many strange sects which sprang up in Russia-offshoots from the Greek Catholic Church. It is an odd sect-a church of religious spasms and old-time revivalism, with shoutings and screamings and hysterical frenzies. And yet the priests intone everything, even to the marriage ceremony.
REAL HENRY GEORGEISTS.
This church is the foundation of their governmental ideas-a strange assortment of socialistic ideals. They are the simon-pure Henry Georgeists when it comes to political economy. They grew in Russia to want no government save that of the church. The moral law was to be the only set of statutes which they observed. Too much Russian law was, perhaps, one reason for this way of looking at things. To sum it up in a few rods, this is what they came to hold to: Each man should own his own cabbage patch, and on it raise as nearly as possible all that he and his family needed. On this plot of ground each should pay to the church a sort of tithe.
Russia did not like this. She used a gentleness truly Russian in striving to stop it. When Cossacks had harassed them and burned their house, the Molokanes began to tire of their mother country. They were never afflicted with too great patriotism. It did not coincide with their ideas of right and wrong.
Then came the Russo-Japanese War. The Molokane in their far=away fields thought little of the struggle until the mother country began to draft soldiers. Then this people began to flee to America. Here laws would not harass them-at least, so had they been told. They packed up their samovars and their babies and took steerage passage to Castle Garden-thence took emigrant cars to Los Angeles. It began three years ago. Today there are 5000 of the people in this city.
A SLUM SANDWICH.
They are sandwiched into the slum district. On one side of them are Mexicans; on another are Armenians. The big, brown-eyed, olive-skinned maidens of this race come and go on the borders of the Molokane district and occasionally mingle with the white-haired, awkward-limbed girls. Here and there-everywhere-among the Russian homes are Japanese houses, and slant-eyed, brown-skinned Orientals of the race which their mother country fought, run to and fro at their work among this indifferent people.
They had come here to avoid laws. They had come to form colonies on a socialistic basis, where statutes would not bother them.
“And,” said one, “We find here more law than we ever knew.”
FORTY-TWO IN HOUSE
They do-along the lines of health. And they don’t like it. In Russia they could live as they pleased. In Los Angeles, health officials have a habit of weeding out overcrowded tenements and using gentle force to minister to the wards of sick children. At No. 310 Amelia Street two of these health officers found one ten-room house with forty-two people living within its walls. The Molokane can’t see why anyone should want to interfere with such domestic arrangements and often make obstinate protest.
Similarly they treat the question of medical attendance. They will go to American physicians when children are sick because they must pay their Russian doctor. And it is in accordance with their beliefs that the government should help them when they are in trouble.
CHAIR SWINGS OVER DOCTOR.
One physician found a child in a crowded room suffering from diphtheria. He administered anti-toxin-rather he started to do this. He got the needle into the child’s skin. It hurt. She flinched and screamed. Her father-a large man with a beard reaching half way to his waist, and an arm like the leg of an ox-had been standing by, watching, surly suspicious. He leaped forward when the cry came. The doctor heard a grunt and looking up saw a chair swinging in the huge hairy paws above his head. He dodged and stepped back. Then he stood his ground. For he is a good boxer. For five minutes there was a very pretty fight-science against brute strength. Science triumphed with a clean upper cut to the jaw. While the females of the family were bringing the hairy father to his senses the physician completed the injection. He departed smiling for he had been in the colony before, and was accustomed to such things.
Then there was the case of the doctor who had been summoned to the bedside of a dying child. He told the parents the little one was about to pass away. He administered an injection hypodermically to stimulate his patient. He left the house. Soon after he was called back. The baby had died. The father met him, armed with a long, keen knife. The doctor fled for his life. The chase went over blocks, and finally a policeman rescued the hapless physician.
A County Hospital physician once left antiseptic tablets for a sick child. The parents gave them internally, and there was a little procession of sad-eyed mourners filing from the house behind a pitifully-cheap coffin next day.
ANNOYING MARRIAGES
Most annoying because of their frequency are the Molokane marriages. They won’t get licenses. The civil marriage is not a part of their creed. A boy and a girl-weddings come in youth with these people-make up their minds to unite. They call the priest. He intones the service in the midst of a crowd in the house of one. Then comes a feast. Every one is solemn. At the end a burst of religious frenzy leaves half the guests hysterical. The men kiss one another at parting. So do the women. For there is no cross kissing at all with these people.
As a rule a Russian midwife officiates at a birth. And then no report is made to the health office. With death the case is very apt to be similar.
SIMPLE AND HARMLESS
With all these things they are a simple, harmless people. The men work like slaves on the steam railroads or electric lines. The women hoe garden, wash, do housework or sew. They make drawn work and even the little girls are busy at this all day long, unless they be tending too many babies to allow them to do it.
They are for the most part vegetarians. They enjoy rugged health. Their samovars are the household gods to which they have clung through thick and thin. These big brass affairs adorn all their homes. In them is made the Russia tea. It is brewed from cakes of cheap black tea mixed with molasses. It is drawn lukewarm and tastes like physic.
They save their money and obey the laws so far as real trouble goes. When one does harm another the priest settles the affair. And so the people of this colony go on, increasing, minding their own business, a problem to the health officials, who in turn are to them a never-ceasing source of wonder.
Clever Fist Beats Chair
Doctor Treating Molokane Has to Fight
City’s Health Officials Have Their Troubles
Strange Things Occur in Local Russia
Down by the river bed, bordering it on both sides from First Street to Aliso Street, and from Alameda Street to the bluff at the western edge of Boyle Heights, is one of America’s strangest foreign colonies-a colony where disciples of Tolstoi ignore American laws save when they need the law’s help. The Molokane-2000 of them-live here and multiply, mostly to wonderful contrariety to health regulations.
Here Health Department officials and American physicians find themselves harassed by fearful ignorance of sanitary customs and by an ignorance of medical requirements which is well nigh uncanny. Here doctors have fled hypodermic syringes in hand, from fathers, chair brandishing; or, standing their ground, have fought grim battles in behalf of the health of the community. Children have died in this district because parents spread insect powders on their bread and butter, or fond relatives dissolved antiseptic tablets in water to make the fluid more refreshing. Men and women have wed, calmly ignoring the marriage licenses, and children have been born without the scratch of a pen being laid to report blanks. This colony is, indeed, the thorn in the sides of those who get their salaries from the city treasury for caring for the city’s people.
PEOPLE ONLY PICTURESQUE
It is a picturesque place-a place which, is not of America. But it is picturesque only so far as people go. In itself it is a squalid region, a huddle of flat houses and tenements, of squat cottages and dilapidated huts. Its streets are dusty and the afternoon sun blazes unkindly into front windows, warming rooms already too warm from many babies, and fetid from drying clothing.
The picturesqueness comes to you when you happen on a group of huge, hairy men, booted in cowhide, wearing leather-visored caps and shirts which flap apron like in the wind. These are tall, broad-shouldered sons of the soil, with long, full beards and heavy, ox-eyed faces. Everything in their figures suggests massive physical strength. And in their features many line speaks of calmness almost amounting to bovine indifference. Their women pass by them or work on porches and inside doorways-women on whose heads are white or tinted kirtles. Their dresses are of yellow and red and green. Their feet are large. They are heavy-breasted, broad hipped and wide-shouldered. From generations back they and their others toiled in the fields, stopping their work only as they bore children. Such are the Molokane.
They come from that part of Russia near Poland. They were always peasants. They came to belong to one of the many strange sects which sprang up in Russia-offshoots from the Greek Catholic Church. It is an odd sect-a church of religious spasms and old-time revivalism, with shoutings and screamings and hysterical frenzies. And yet the priests intone everything, even to the marriage ceremony.
REAL HENRY GEORGEISTS.
This church is the foundation of their governmental ideas-a strange assortment of socialistic ideals. They are the simon-pure Henry Georgeists when it comes to political economy. They grew in Russia to want no government save that of the church. The moral law was to be the only set of statutes which they observed. Too much Russian law was, perhaps, one reason for this way of looking at things. To sum it up in a few rods, this is what they came to hold to: Each man should own his own cabbage patch, and on it raise as nearly as possible all that he and his family needed. On this plot of ground each should pay to the church a sort of tithe.
Russia did not like this. She used a gentleness truly Russian in striving to stop it. When Cossacks had harassed them and burned their house, the Molokanes began to tire of their mother country. They were never afflicted with too great patriotism. It did not coincide with their ideas of right and wrong.
Then came the Russo-Japanese War. The Molokane in their far=away fields thought little of the struggle until the mother country began to draft soldiers. Then this people began to flee to America. Here laws would not harass them-at least, so had they been told. They packed up their samovars and their babies and took steerage passage to Castle Garden-thence took emigrant cars to Los Angeles. It began three years ago. Today there are 5000 of the people in this city.
A SLUM SANDWICH.
They are sandwiched into the slum district. On one side of them are Mexicans; on another are Armenians. The big, brown-eyed, olive-skinned maidens of this race come and go on the borders of the Molokane district and occasionally mingle with the white-haired, awkward-limbed girls. Here and there-everywhere-among the Russian homes are Japanese houses, and slant-eyed, brown-skinned Orientals of the race which their mother country fought, run to and fro at their work among this indifferent people.
They had come here to avoid laws. They had come to form colonies on a socialistic basis, where statutes would not bother them.
“And,” said one, “We find here more law than we ever knew.”
FORTY-TWO IN HOUSE
They do-along the lines of health. And they don’t like it. In Russia they could live as they pleased. In Los Angeles, health officials have a habit of weeding out overcrowded tenements and using gentle force to minister to the wards of sick children. At No. 310 Amelia Street two of these health officers found one ten-room house with forty-two people living within its walls. The Molokane can’t see why anyone should want to interfere with such domestic arrangements and often make obstinate protest.
Similarly they treat the question of medical attendance. They will go to American physicians when children are sick because they must pay their Russian doctor. And it is in accordance with their beliefs that the government should help them when they are in trouble.
CHAIR SWINGS OVER DOCTOR.
One physician found a child in a crowded room suffering from diphtheria. He administered anti-toxin-rather he started to do this. He got the needle into the child’s skin. It hurt. She flinched and screamed. Her father-a large man with a beard reaching half way to his waist, and an arm like the leg of an ox-had been standing by, watching, surly suspicious. He leaped forward when the cry came. The doctor heard a grunt and looking up saw a chair swinging in the huge hairy paws above his head. He dodged and stepped back. Then he stood his ground. For he is a good boxer. For five minutes there was a very pretty fight-science against brute strength. Science triumphed with a clean upper cut to the jaw. While the females of the family were bringing the hairy father to his senses the physician completed the injection. He departed smiling for he had been in the colony before, and was accustomed to such things.
Then there was the case of the doctor who had been summoned to the bedside of a dying child. He told the parents the little one was about to pass away. He administered an injection hypodermically to stimulate his patient. He left the house. Soon after he was called back. The baby had died. The father met him, armed with a long, keen knife. The doctor fled for his life. The chase went over blocks, and finally a policeman rescued the hapless physician.
A County Hospital physician once left antiseptic tablets for a sick child. The parents gave them internally, and there was a little procession of sad-eyed mourners filing from the house behind a pitifully-cheap coffin next day.
ANNOYING MARRIAGES
Most annoying because of their frequency are the Molokane marriages. They won’t get licenses. The civil marriage is not a part of their creed. A boy and a girl-weddings come in youth with these people-make up their minds to unite. They call the priest. He intones the service in the midst of a crowd in the house of one. Then comes a feast. Every one is solemn. At the end a burst of religious frenzy leaves half the guests hysterical. The men kiss one another at parting. So do the women. For there is no cross kissing at all with these people.
As a rule a Russian midwife officiates at a birth. And then no report is made to the health office. With death the case is very apt to be similar.
SIMPLE AND HARMLESS
With all these things they are a simple, harmless people. The men work like slaves on the steam railroads or electric lines. The women hoe garden, wash, do housework or sew. They make drawn work and even the little girls are busy at this all day long, unless they be tending too many babies to allow them to do it.
They are for the most part vegetarians. They enjoy rugged health. Their samovars are the household gods to which they have clung through thick and thin. These big brass affairs adorn all their homes. In them is made the Russia tea. It is brewed from cakes of cheap black tea mixed with molasses. It is drawn lukewarm and tastes like physic.
They save their money and obey the laws so far as real trouble goes. When one does harm another the priest settles the affair. And so the people of this colony go on, increasing, minding their own business, a problem to the health officials, who in turn are to them a never-ceasing source of wonder.
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